


To The Last

by Leyenn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Apocalypse, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end, there's nothing left, but she'll still keep trying to the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Last

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the First Time Bad Sex Project.

She watches the last retreat of the last battle from the last standing tower, the last rag-tag fleet of Hogwarts' once-children limping home on their old and battered Nimbuses across the Quidditch field. Her magical eye spots Cho in the lead, and she allows a small part - just a small part - of herself to know the relief that sight brings. They've lost all the others of her team now, all the others of all the teams - Fred and George, and Justine who took Cedric's place, all too early; Wood and Angelina soon after, and finally Malfoy last month when Hogsmeade fell. It's a year yesterday that she buried Ron with his parents and she doesn't know where Harry is. She doesn't really care anymore.

  


*

  


"Who this time," she asks without question in her voice as Cho makes it up the last two steps. She's limping again: the bloodied bandage around her ankle tells enough of the story to make asking unimportant.

"Wren. Sadie. Branstone and Baddock." She limps into a chair and re-ties her bandage.

Hermione reaches for the Yearbook pile before turning around. There aren't enough names left to fill a page now, but still she keeps up the ritual. They've burnt the moving photos for warmth and filled the grounds from here to the Forest with empty graves: now this is all she has to keep track of their dwindling army... and, she supposes if it matters now, to mark the dead.

"Dennis followed me back," Cho says over her shoulder. Hermione turns and fixes her with a one-eyed glance, the other still on the Book as she flips past Creevey's name again.

If she were still capable of feeling, of affection, she might be in love with this girl. She counts it a triumph that she can do as much as accept their comradeship, and try to believe it might be there even if they weren't the last two sharp enough to survive.

Cho strips off her robes, and Hermione manages thought enough to tap the window with her finger. "Close," she tells it, not even in Latin, and it helpfully bricks itself up. Cho looks at her for a moment; perhaps surprised, perhaps not. Perhaps only that Hermione can care enough for that - certainly not that the castle obeys her command. Hogwarts is Hermione and Hermione is Hogwarts, and when this last tower crumbles Hermione will fall to dust with it. If luck stays with her they may both see another sun rise and set. If not...

A naked Cho Chang with grubby, soot-winded face and limping on a bloody ankle stands looking at her. There are scars - there are always scars - but fewer than her own, and somehow she finds a shock of feeling inside her. Cho is despite it all still quite beautiful, quite... attractive. It seems a little sad that she's never thought about it before, but there's never been time.

Tomorrow there may never be any time, for either of them, ever again.

  


*

  


She's never done it with a woman before - not that she's never seen the appeal, because she did grow up around Harry and Ron and Fred and George and Lee, and it's not as if she ever actively didn't want to. She just hasn't ever done it with anyone, unless she thinks about that oddness with Malfoy at the end, and that was hardly anything. He only wanted Harry, and she wanted... well...

Perhaps she wanted Cho, she lies to herself. Perhaps she just wanted feeling, to have something of what they were fighting for, one more time. Either way she was disappointed.

She lies down on the bed and wriggles out of her robes as she watches Cho re-bind the fraying ends tickling her ankle. She wears nothing beneath - they can't spare people or spells enough to wash clothing, so better to go without.

They don't speak of sharing the bed; although they have done most nights since the Ravenclaw banners fell, this night is different. Cho climbs onto her with silent eyes, dead eyes that search for a life she can't give. She doesn't know where to put her hands - back or front? No one ever said - and their first kiss is awkward, because she feels her teeth are suddenly too large again and there doesn't seem room for another tongue in her mouth.

There are fingers that don't really fit well enough where they try to be, pale breasts that only brush without tenderness and teeth that clack together before their kisses disappear. For a moment under Cho's thumb pressing too hard she thinks she felt something, but it leaves without letting her understand what it feels _like_. Cho makes a sound, like pain but less so, bites her shoulder to hide it, pushes fingers into her when she's still too tight and crushes her hand between scarred fighter's thighs. The pain is distant like all of it now, no longer worth the notice; she only wonders if she's bruising from the pressure, if the last trickle of blood she spills will be in this bed tonight.

It's over fast. "Cho," she mutters into a mouth full of uncut black hair, as if she wants to ask, did it even begin? Is this how it should be? She always thought there'd be... more.

She thought that about everything.

  


*

  


Minutes later her muscles still ache and her head still pounds - she wants to do it again, make it better, make it right, make it magical and perfect. Make it like a last night should be.

Cho snores softly in her ear and kicks her. She sits up and puts feet on the cold slate floor until emotion fades and her mind is almost blank again, then shrugs back into her robes. Let the last warrior have her rest and reward: she, Hermione Granger, only waits for the dawn and everything she knows will follow.

Time enough tomorrow, she thinks. Time enough, if they're lucky.

  


*

  



End file.
